Good beans, banter and latte art – barista joys

From the science of coffee roasting and the creativity of latte art to learning about digital apps for managing a café – Sophie Banks feels ready for the hospitality sector.

She’s just completed and is top of her class for the New Zealand Certificate in Food and Beverage Service (Level 4) programme. With this, and the Level 3 programme under her belt – she’s equipped with technical skills and knowledge plus real-life experience from barista work and now supervising her peers at the popular Garage Café on campus.

A love of making and drinking coffee led Sophie to WITT’s hospitality department. She’d been homeschooled throughout her high school years in Auckland before her family moved to Taranaki in 2022.

"I was about to finish my schooling, and I decided to check out this WITT place at Open Day a couple of years ago,” she recalls.

She was impressed with the facilities. “It looked pretty cool, so I thought I’ll give it a go.”

While the Level 3 certificate gave her the skills and tools for cafés and restaurants – including health and safety requirements, customer service and barista skills – she’s moved into supervising at WITT’s Impressions Restaurant and Garage Café doing Level 4 in Semester One.

What makes a ‘good’ coffee?

At the heart of her mahi is understanding what makes a good coffee. It’s a complex fusion of elements matched with individual taste preferences.

“Everyone has a different definition of what makes a good coffee. It’s all about having good quality beans and a good coffee machine. The beans are the biggest part.”

Variations in roasting and storage can make all difference. Even if you find a trusted brand, beans can vary. A bag of beans she opened that morning smelt ‘chemically.’ This can happen from a natural process of de-gassing when the beans release carbon dioxide which then gets trapped in bag before sealing.

Sophie started her caffeine adventure at age 14 but with no fancy coffee machine at home. When she started at WITT her dad bought a café-quality espresso machine – after she jokingly suggested he do so. Fair deal - now he gets excellent coffee at home made by his professional barista daughter!

A coffee fiend yes, but Sophie has never touched alcohol – the other kind of drink she’s been discovering at Level 4.

As well as the basics of bar service and making cocktails, she’s found it interesting learning about the history and origins of spirits, such as tequila – a Mexican spirit evolved from an ancient Aztec drink distilled from the tap root of the agave plant.

Is it tricky to sell cocktails when you haven’t tried them? No, she says. “I just get one of my classmates to do a taste test.”

The Level 4 course focusses on safety – health, food and security to interactions between colleagues, managers and customers. Students practice set-up and management using an app called Food Safe Pro – a digital food safety management, planning and checklist tool for everything including health and safety, temperature control (fridges and freezers), cleaning, orders and record keeping.

As a non-drinker (put off by a stint working in a sports stadium bar and going home stinking of beer), Sophie is highly aware of the responsibility in the hospitality industry to promote safe alcohol consumption. “We have a big problem with alcohol abuse in this country, and I do think about that.”

Business time

Sophie is considering another study path next. Keen to start her own coffee cart and eventually a café, she’s planning to enrol in a business course online to ensure she’s well-prepared.

Her dream offers work and a lifestyle that combines what she most enjoys - making great coffee and interacting with a wide range of people.

Being homeschooled as a teenager, she didn’t have much of a social group. “Coming here to WITT, I’ve been able to talk to people and get to know different people. Even if I only see them once a day for getting their morning coffee, you start to learn things about people. You get to see how all these different people live and it’s really interesting.”

New friendship has been another bonus of her time at WITT where she’s met Jani. “She is one of my closest friends now and I didn’t know her before I came to WITT. When I think about that, it makes me glad I did the course.”

Meanwhile the daily grind keeps her busy making coffee at WITT, at home and at work. As well as studying at WITT Monday to Wednesday, she works in a Stratford’s Shakee Pear café near Pioneer Village three days a week and helps with trades academy students on Thursday at WITT.

Her tutor Peter Lang says Sophie has been “an impressive student right from the get-go.”

Her capacity to face less glamourous tasks with “grace, good humour and can-do attitude” makes her a talented, professional, and passionate learner, he says.

“Whatever business snatches her up will be very lucky to have her.”

Find out more about WITT's Food and Beverage programmes here: https://www.witt.ac.nz/study/hospitality/food-and-beverage